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Гос филология / ddd / The grammatical category of mood and voice

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11.The grammatical category of voice

The category of voice (which is found both with finite and non-finite forms) is one of the most formal grammatical categories, because this category doesn’t refer to any fragment of reality, doesn’t reflect any fragment of reality – it’s a way of describing a certain fragment of reality. The category of voice deals with the participants of a happening (doer, action, object) and how they are represented in the sentence (subject, predicate, object). The Active Voice shows that the grammatical subject of the sentence or the subjectival is the doer of the action, denoted by the verb, the Passive Voice shows that the subject or the subjectival is an object of the action. The frequency of occurrence of the English Passive Voice is very great, greater than in Russian. One of the reasons is that the number of verbs capable of forming the Passive Voice is greater in English than in Russian. In many languages: PV – transitive verbs, in English: PV – any object verb. In some cases the lex. character of the verb the subj. of the active construction can’t be regarded as the doer of the action. These cases are: ex. He lost his father in the war.; he broke his leg. Disagreement btw the gram. form of the verb and the lex. mean-g of the verb. Due to the lex. mean-g of the V the semantics of the construction becomes passive. In fact the subj. is not the doer, but the sufferer. Some grammarians treat these constructions as active due to the gram. form.

Opposition: activepassive. Passive – marked -> pattern “be + II participle”, active –unmarked

Forms of Fut.Cont, Present Perf.Cont, Past Perf.Cont, Future Perf.Cont – no parallel forms in passive.

Any other voices??? -> doubts and controversy

- the reflexive voice (eq.He dressed himself) – the agent and the object of the action simultaneously ;

- the reciprocal voice (They greeted each other) – not 1 person; action aimed at the other member of the same group;

- the middle voice (The door opened) – the form of the v is act, but the meaning is passive.

The active voice has a number of mean-gs: active, passive, middle, reflective, reciprocal.

Pr. Ilyish “ Eng. Has several voices. The classif-n is based on mean-g only.

Pr. Barhudarov calls the active voice non-passive.

The idea of the Passive voice is expressed not only by means of “to be + P2”, but by means of “get”, “come”, “go” + P2 and “get” + passive infinitive (ingressive meaning - He got involved; He got to be respected).

The existence of various means of expressing voice distinctions makes it possible to consider voice as a functional-semantic category with the grammatical category of voice as its center and other means of expressing voice as a periphery.

The grammatical category of Mood

A great divergence of opinions on the ? of the cat. of mood is caused by the fact that identical mood forms can express diff. meanings & diff. forms can express similar meanings.

The cat. of mood shows the relation of the nominative con­tent of the sent. towards reality. By this cat. the action can be pres.ed as real, non-real, desirable, recommended, etc.

It is obvious that the opp. of the 1 integral form of the indic­ative & the 1 integral form of the subj-ve underlies the unity of the whole system of Eng moods. The formal mark of this opp. is the tense-retrospect shift in the subj-ve, the latter being the strong member of the opp.. The shift consists in the perf. aspect being opposed to the imperf. aspect, both turned into the relat. substitutes for the absolutive past & pres. tenses of the indicative.

The study of the Eng mood reveals a certain correlation of its formal & semantic feat.s. The subj-ve, the integral mood of unreality, pres.s the 2 sets of forms acc. to the structural division of Val tenses into the pres. & the past. These form-sets constitute the 2 corresponding func.al subsystems of the subj-ve, namely, the spective, the mood of attitudes, & the condi­tional, the mood of appraising causal-conditional relations of process­es. Each of these, in its turn, falls into 2 systemic subsets, so that at the immed-ly working level of pres.ation we have the 4 subj-ve form-types identified on the basis of the strict correlation btw their structure & their func.: the pure spective, the modal spective, the stipulative conditional, the consective conditional:

Pure Spective (Subj-ve 1) consideration, desideration, inducement

Stipulative Conditional (Subj-ve 2) unreal condition

Consective Conditional (Subj-ve 3) unreal consequence

Modal Spective (Subj-ve 4) consideration, desideration, inducement

The elaborated scheme clearly shows that the so-called "impera­tive mood" has historically coincided with Subj-ve 1.

The described system is not finished in terms of the historical de­velopment of lang.; on the contrary, it is in the state of making & change. Its actual manifestations are complicated by neutraliza­tions of formal & semantic contrasts, by fluctuating uses of the auxiliaries, of the finite "be" in the singular.